The Temperance of a Spider
by ParlorGamesToMe
Summary: "I was a man deceiving and a man deceived." Loki inwardly justifies his actions towards Thor and the rest of Asgard.


I was a man deceiving and a man deceived. I was a brother who felt the blood of my kindred on my hands, on my fingertips, on my blade. I understood then that I enjoyed the sensation. I quivered and stood tall. I shook and stilled. That night, I danced on an altitude, swung on a thinning thread of contradictions, and swayed upon a wind of my own lies.

I was a man and I was a spider. Cleverly, I wove my wed. Spun, spun, spun, I did, threads of shattered glass and bendable bone and golden hair and raven's feathers. I wove my web, for what else was I but a spider interlacing? Trapped, gilded prey struggled. My brother pled for mercy, and though I knew of the perpetual love the man captured had shown me, I also knew of the dissonance between us. Only one shone as the sun and the other the moon. No one missed the moon then, and no one does now; a plethora of stars always gleam in its wake. Plenty pinpricks of radiance light the way, but without the sun, days extinguish. I, in my hateful web woven, spun jealousy, spun hate, spun covetousness, spun duplicity, and swathed my brother in a funeral shroud. My brother paid not for loving me, but for being loved.

I was a king, I was an imposter, I was a bloodline tainted, I was a block of ice carved into a son. My brother's heat cast its warmth upon me, though he never noticed the water drip drip dripping from my bones, from my eyes, from skin, seeping into him as we embraced.

I was a brother, I was a son, I was a friend, I was prince, I was nearly beloved. I hated and was hated; or, conversely, I was hated and so I hated. Nothing springs from detestation but detestation. A weed cannot become a rose bush.

I was a promise and I was a spell. Someone used me as insurance, as safety, as a guarantee for a future untroubled. I was a tool fallow. That night, I dropped or was dropped; no one could tell, not even I, who caused the descent. Why let him use me, let him win? I had a father, a creature unknown that once haunted my childish nightmares. I had a father that chewed up the stars and spit them out. I had a father disguised as my bitterest enemy. I had a father, I had two, and none ever truly belonged to me. I slaughtered one and let the other die from the inside out. Blood ran down my arms and through my veins. I never belonged to anyone.

I haunted and was a man haunted. Like a specter, I floated legless down halls. Inside candles, I nestled, erupting in a red and orange spout of flame. There, I danced like a flicker of discord in men's eyes. They thought me a demon, a demon dead, a demon falling, a demon rotting, a demon vanished. On nights fermented in drink, they reviled and blessed my body. I was a sinner to most and saint to several. Not even I understand who was right. I bit what touched me. I snapped at what loved me. I broke before I could be broken. I let hands crack and bones shatter and blood trail while I hid my wounds under robes, under words, under smiles like moonlight refracting.

I killed and let them kill. Always, I hid myself away, shrinking inward, wilting. I bled before them and grinned like a madman. Blood froze in my veins. At impact, the blocks of ice within cracked. Like icebergs hit, they broke apart. Men fell, men such as I, and in the end, none stood tall.

I was a desert and I was an oasis. Like a mirage, in my brother's sight, I reflected the dearth of pain, the sweet sprinkling of sunlight. My eyes swirled in my sockets like a river flowing. Blue, blue, blue, rushing, the water moved. He knelt down and cupped his colossal hands. There, he sipped venom and supped with monstrosity. Joyfully, gratefully, he ate the meal I cooked full of bones, dripping with the juices of blood, and held out his plate to be filled once more. The winds in my mouth blew with sand and falsehoods. I, his beloved brother, burrowed under the ground at the slightest storm, more than ready to flee, and he took watch above my body as though he thought I wished for his protection. He thought me trusting, thought me fearful, thought me a little brother unprotected, and relished in his role of protector. He was a rock and a handful of trickling sand. If he was the water within, I was the prickles of a cactus.

I was born in the winter, in the death of everything, a child of decay. He was born in the light of the sun on a faultless summer day, so close to the autumn that he could touch the chill and still feel the soothing warmth of the sun. I shrieked in the moonlight and he giggled in the sunrise. The beauty of life emerged to meet him and left at my entrance. Frost kissed my cheeks and nipped at my nose, staining me blue. The sun pressed its affection against his face, dyed his hair, and kept him forever golden. I told the stars then that I did not mind. I was a babe frozen and a babe frigid. There, I was content to lie in the snow and count the stars. Moonlight cloaked my face and the sky hued my hair the black of his father's ravens. Their feathers bound themselves to me just as the strands of sunlight wove themselves into his scalp.

I was a charge and I was a master. Marionettes swayed beneath my careful ministrations, dancing a fine, fine thread between lackadaisical and insane. I kissed lips and pressed words into mouths. I controlled and was controlled. Family bound me inseparably. They handpicked truths and falsehoods to keep and spread, then to sprinkle into the ground. Why, then, were they surprised by what grew? They had sown, and so they reaped the product of a love turned inward. I was a seed reversed, a sprout smoldering, a flower that opened with petals of thorn.

I was a song and I was a screech. From sets of lips, the sound did alter. Soft lips, gnawed lips, pink lips, thin lips, parched lips, cracked lips, licked lips, lips that loved and lips that lied; from them came my name, came my call, came my melody that burned the throats it exited. The inverse of harmony rebounded from their pleas. I couldn't climb, I couldn't rise, I couldn't let them pull me onto what I had shattered, the scintillating link between their lives and my fabricated role.

I was a beggar and I was a king. He absorbed their love, their admiration, their trust, and I slunk in the shadows for scraps I claimed not to desire.

I won and so I lost; he won afterwards, and I had still lost. We forfeited all, forfeited bonds, forfeited paths untaken, forfeited both ignorance and purity, forfeited the luxury of pretending we were heirs and equals. I sat on throne made of ash, made of feathers, made of whispers in the ears of innocents and culprits.

I promised and was promise. I was a vow forged by a man who saw naught but the gold covering his deadened eye. I was a promise, was a vow, was a hope for something greater, all of which amounted to naught, to worse than naught, to negativity, a black hole swirling, suctioning all into my abyss.

I nestled in a complete absence of light and it nestled within me. It was not darkness, not evil, not the opposite of the sun, but the lack of it, the lack of anything; the lack of morals, of hope, of possibilities, of sadness, of joy, of wickedness, of good. It was…nothing, just nothing, a maddening deficiency of anything. I became nothing, became colorless, became a scale with a balance, a balance only seen in the center of the universe. I touched the core of the cosmos and found naught. No blame, no hurt, no hunger, no cure, no forgiveness, no divine circlet of light. I told myself then that if the universe stood there, if it did not quaver, then it must soon. The nonexistence drove me further into the embrace of madness, and so I did make a repugnant vow: I would upset the delicately proportioned equilibrium of the universe. At my hands would arrive entropy. And even if my brother won, and goodness, the pale rays of light, prevailed, I would still win. At last, I would win whether chaos or peace descended. The universe would no longer be nothing, I would no longer touch nothing at every crux, I would no longer comprise nothing. My fingers traced the hinge of creation and yanked.

I was a man built from delusions and delusions that stemmed from a man. I was, I was, I was, I was: then I breathed and felt and saw and bled and made others bleed. I fought and drank and slaughtered. At my behest- no one else's, I reiterate- I exhaled mistruths, I danced with illusions, and I carefully crafted apparitions that only those who claimed to know my heart were struck by. All the while, I smirked, for they would fall as I had. They would crawl, would kneel, would sing my hymns soon enough, gazing at me lovingly, gazing at me with the same blue eyes.

'_So proud, so proud, so proud, my son, my brother, my friend, my king, my dear love, so very proud, you prove your worth and make us so proud,' _they would chant; or so I promised myself. Even I was susceptible to my silver tongue. It wove mirages as it wagged.

I dreamed and was dreamt of. Brother and mother saw not the demon, saw not the spider, saw not the desert, saw not the throne made from lunacy, saw not the abyss whirling within. Saw, they did, a child weeping, a child astray, a night with stars, a wound they would so gleefully mend. Father, not even now may I presume to have learned his intentions; after so many years, not even may I comprehend his pretension. Saw, he did, or so I claim, a perversion in his son's old cradle, a storybook monster, an iceberg that made all sensation of his numb, a vow unfulfilled, a promise for the future diluted, a call from war that instead brought such measures upon him. If it was his predilection to raise an heir into a king such as he, did he not succeed in my temperance? I lied in the room of a liar. I stole in the room of a thief. I killed in the room of a killer. Which of us was fit to possess the throne? Power corroded out hearts and flayed our flesh. Pity we were not the same underneath.


End file.
